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You know that feeling…When you are sitting in the classroom, the lecture is over and the last thing the professor says is “the final is in 2 weeks, make sure to study early and have a good weekend!” You look at your friend first and then the classmates and they look so excited to take the final! Like a good student I am, the most beneficial thing would be to study weeks before! Well that did not happen… I decided to procrastinate in studying earlier on and now I have to the next day to cram for the final exam. I woke up and got ready to go to College Library. I get there and see my friends and go sit with them. When I'm sitting down I make a list of all the things I have to do to study for the final. I end up reviewing most of the notes, lectures, assignments, etc not without talking to my friends from time to time. It is almost time for the exam which is at 10:00 AM. I ended up pulling an all nighter to cram for the final exam. I pack up my things and head straight to the exam room. I feel somewhat confident in my ability to remember what I learned. I get to the room and start doing my final. All of a sudden, I forgot most of the things that I learned! This probably happened because most of the information leading up to the final was all put into my short term (working) memory that could only be in my mind for a short amount of time. The short term memory did not go into my long term memory called consolidation: the process by a new memory is gradually shifted to long term memory. Which takes 24-72 hours which I did not have the efficient time for it to occur. Some other causes of forgetting was that it was mainly an explicit memory test which was more about recall that didn’t have that many cues to help me on the test. Some of the strategies I could have taken to do better was to study before for consolidation, sleeping, and trying to make more meaningful connections to the topics.

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If you have played any sports or games you have most likely dealt with plateaus in performance. I started powerlifting 2-3 years ago. I have had my ups and down throughout the years I have been doing it. In the beginning of powerlifting, I was making good progress, every week was a personal record, but then at a point I got stuck. One of the plateaus that I experienced was my squat. In powerlifting, you compete in the squat, bench, deadlift, so every life counts as your total amount of weight lifted. So, when I was dealing with a plateau in my squat, it was a big problem. I am not really built for squat biomechanically since I have long femurs which means it takes more range of motion to get the depth that I need. Anyways, there was a point where I was progressing, then I even started to become weaker on the squat or couldn’t even add any weight for months! I was really frustrated and started to doubt myself. I was at the point where I could give up at any second, but thought to myself all the good things that come from powerlifting and I shouldn't. I started to think about why I was plateauing. Somethings causing this plateau in performance was most likely strategy change, fatigue, and motivation. Whenever I had a bad day in squatting, I would think my technique was bad, so I would always change it every 2 weeks or so which is not very good to get a good movement pattern for the squat. Another reason was motivation, because of this plateau, I didn’t really want to continue, so my ability to beat it could be causing the plateau. Lastly, fatigue, whether it was physical fatigue for going too heavy in the gym inhibiting me or mental fatigue from life, school, etc. I have learned that plateaus are bound to happen in powerlifting since you can’t get stronger every single day or week, it is a slow process, so thinking about all the factors you can control is what you can do to break the plateau. I really now think of enjoying the journey and taking what's there!

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Soccer - Psychological Refractory Period 

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Soccer - Psychological Refractory Period 

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I have played soccer for most of my highschool days. We weren’t the best, but not the worst. It didn’t matter since we were playing our rival school in a couple of days. Everybody was on edge since this was one of our last games of the season. I decided I was going to train a lot, but not that hard. I was practicing my dribbling, ball control, shooting, etc at this game. I was imagining I was in the game and pretending to play. My teammate was also practicing with me. We were practicing one on one, shooting, goalie and having a fun time as well. During the one on one, I was able to juke him out and get past him and he also did the same to me. It was getting late, so we headed back to our houses to sleep. Some days later, it was time to play the other school. We were all nervous, but ready to play them. It was an away game, and my teammates were all focused and silent. We got there and started to warm up for the game. We are in the field and ready to play. I get the ball at a time, and I remember getting past a couple of people and passing to my teammate which he scored. We ended up losing the game, but, now that I learned more about the psychological refractory period (PRP) , I thought to myself how come I was passing the people? PRP is that the response to the second stimulus will be slower since the first stimulus is still being processed. So when I was juking the ball with my feet or my body, the first stimulus was still being processed for them of the fake out and then the actual way I was going or the second stimulus was slower to respond to which is why I could get past them.

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Volleyball to Spikeball - Positive Transfer

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Volleyball to Spikeball - Positive Transfer

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I play volleyball as a hobby and enjoy it very much. I enjoy playing volleyball since it is a fast paced, energy packed game. It also is very enjoyable because of the teamwork dynamic of the game. Without the work of yourself and your teammates, you’ll never be able to win, so playing your hearts out with your teammates is rewarding and fun! So, jumping to my brother’s graduation, we needed to bring some kind of games to have some fun with my family. My brother decided to bring Spikeball to the graduation. I was curious because I never played the game, but it looked pretty fun. Everyone was playing and it looked really fun. Once it was my turn, I started to play and at first I wasn’t that good. It was confusing at first, but I ended up getting the hang of it. It only took a couple of games and I’d say I was pretty good. I think this happened because of positive transfer. Based on the Identical elements theory (Thorndike), there is positive transfer when there is similarity of skill and context components. With Volleyball and spikeball, there are similar skills such as the kinds of serves. For example, the spike serve in volleyball is similar to a spike in spikeball. Based on the theory the past experience from volleyball is transferring to spikeball which could say why I was pretty good at spikeball. There are still similar skills like hand eye coordination used in volleyball that is transferred in spikeball.